If something might have negative consequences in the real world, politicians seem to feel free to ignore them. If someone annoying, like a journalist or an opposing candidate, asks about potential consequences, it’s easy these days to misrepresent them or deny they exist. And if it turns out that costs or consequences were willfully ignored, no redress is available: election victories based on unmet promises can’t be rescinded, and candidates can’t be sued over falsehoods on the stump.
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Trump cites unfair competition from China as a main source of our loss of manufacturing jobs. As I pointed out in “Economic Reality,” however, in recent decades the U.S. has lost roughly ten times as many potential jobs to increased productivity, mechanization and automation as it has actual jobs to low-cost competition from China.
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We often see poll results showing that increasing numbers of Americans doubt their children will live better than they do. We’d like them to, but why should they? Other than technological improvements which doubtless will continue to make life better for everyone, why should our standard of living improve monotonically? And improve relative to the rest of the world? Certainly the advantage in this regard can shift to other countries, just as it shifted to us in the past.
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I’ll move toward summing up on the causes of today’s conditions by quoting from Thomas Friedman in The International New York Times of June 30. I think he did a great job of capturing the situation:
It’s the story of our time: The pace of change in technology, globalization and climate have started to outrun the ability of our political systems to build the social, educational, community, workplace and political inovations needed for some citizens to keep up.
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The strategy includes more investment in the nation’s buckling infrastructure and expanding unemployment and health insurance. It calls for paid sick leave, parental leave and wage insurance for workers who suffer a pay cut when changing jobs. And they argue for more resources for poor families with children and universal early childhood education. (The International New York Times, August 3, emphasis added)
This is a very liberal agenda, and many Americans would say the whole and many of its parts constitute undesirable government intervention. What, then – if anything – should be done to arrest the trends described above? If we don’t do something, it’s likely that the income and wealth gap will continue to grow; the downside of globalization will continue to be felt; and our political process will continue to be riven by widespread dissatisfaction.
Though Mr. Marks does not specifically endorse a guaranteed minimum annual income,** he comes very close to saying it. There may well be other solutions, but this is one that should be considered.* http://www.barrons.com/articles/howard-marks-time-to-face-political-reality-1471547346?mod=BOL_hp_highlight_2
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-basic-income-controversary.html
